Gloomhaven

Session 3

Temple of the eclipse

On our way to the location indicated by the Aesther, dark clouds loomed over us. A light drizzle began to fall as we approached a small temple hidden within the Dagger Forest. The building seemed abandoned, but once we were inside, we were transfixed by a fascinating sight: an eternal twilight sky spanned over us. Caught between night and day, the room was illuminated by a strange glow. A quick survey of our surroundings however indicated that we were not welcome. Demons of light and shadow set upon us.

After fending off the demons, and collecting a Crystal of Zenith from a hidden chest we breached a door at the far end of the hallway only to battle our way past stone golems that were supported by ancient artillery. Avoiding poisonous traps and finding yet another wooden chest that contained a sphere of midnight we were able to uncover the entrance to inner sanctum.

Opening the door to the chamber we found a room stuck between eternal darkness and blinding light. Two huge demons flanked a Savvas whose chest pulsed with black and golden lights as it stood by an altar. Savvas' normally cannot master those elements but by the look upon its face, we guessed doing so had driven it mad. We fought our way into the room as the colorless Savvas spawned additional demons and were able to place the crystal and sphere we found in the outer chambers upon the alter, which seemed to slow the Savvas.

With all our strength we drove our weapons deep into the Colorless' chest shattering its core. Suddenly the unnatural light and darkness was pulled toward the gapping wound, gathering inside it before bursting the creature apart. The empty body of the Colorless dropped dead to the floor. The twilight of the inner sanctum returned to normal as we gathered loot, including a helix ring, and left the dilapidated temple behind us, taking the time to stare up at the ceiling, marveling at the impossibility of the place.

Not far outside of the temple we looked up to see a large bird flying overhead. Something was odd though, its movements were jerky, and there was smoke billowing out of it. Then we watched as it plunged suddenly into a nose dive and crashed to the ground to the east. We rushed to the scene to find a limping, soot covered Quatryl kicking a giant winged contraption made of leather and metal.

"Curse the wretched thing!" He yelled in frustration. "I thought I'd worked it out, but it suddenly lost pressure in the piston chamber!" He looked at us " You there! Wonderful timing! Help me get this thing back into the air. There is no time to waste!" Sharing a look of confusion betwixt us we did as the Quatryl asked, setting the wings and banging out a few dents while the engineer repaired the pressure problem.

In under an hour the creature declared the contraption airworthy and jumped into the cockpit. We stood clear and watched in awe as the thing began to flapping wildly, sputting forward and lifted off the ground. Unfortunately, the flight was short-lived, and the second crash wasn't nearly as forgiving, we found Quatryl dead on impact. Seeing there was nothing more to do for it we harvested the machine for valuable parts.

Being as we were already in the Dagger forest the choice was made to raid the Inox encampment that Jekserah had asked us to look into so we set off in the direction that was indicated by her map. The merchant wanted to make an example of some caravan raiders, which seems reasonable enough. For the right amount of amount, almost anything can be made reasonable…